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Title: There Is, Oh, So Much
Author: Edmund Vance Cooke [
More Titles by Cooke]
There is oh, so much for a man to be
In nineteen hundred and now.
He may cover the world like the searching sea
In nineteen hundred and now.
He may be of the rush of the city's roar
And his song may sing where the condors soar,
Or may dip to the dark of Labrador,
In nineteen hundred and now.
There is oh, so much for a man to do
In nineteen hundred and now.
He may sort the suns of Andromeda through
In nineteen hundred and now.
Or he may strive, as a good man must,
For the wretch at his feet who licks the dust,
And never learn how to be even just
In nineteen hundred and now.
There is oh, so much for a man to learn
In nineteen hundred and now:
The least and the most he should trouble to earn
In nineteen hundred and now,
The message burned bright on the heavenly scroll,
The little he needs that his stomach be whole,
The vastness of vision to sate his soul,
In nineteen hundred and now.
There is oh, so much for a man to get
In nineteen hundred and now.
He may drench the earth in vicarious sweat
In nineteen hundred and now.
And his wealth may be but a lifelong itch,
While the lowliest digger within his ditch
May have gained the little to make him rich
In nineteen hundred and now.
There is oh, so much for a man to try
In nineteen hundred and now.
The sea is so deep and the hill so high
In nineteen hundred and now.
But sometimes we look at our little ball
Where the smallest is great and the greatest small
And wonder the why and the what of it all
In nineteen hundred and now.
There is oh, so much, so we work as we may
In nineteen hundred and now,
And loiter a little along the way
In nineteen hundred and now.
O, the honeybee works, but the honeybee clings
To the flowers of life and the honeybee sings!
Let us eat the sweet and forget the stings
In nineteen hundred and now!
[The end]
Edmund Vance Cooke's poem: There Is, Oh, So Much
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